Israeli Rock Star: ‘I Want To Devote All My Strength To Healing Secular-Chareidi Rift’

BNEI BRAK (VINnews) — Israeli rock star Aviv Gefen has been trying to heal tensions between the Chareidi and secular communities which have flared up over the course of the coronavirus outbreak. Gefen recently confessed in a televised interview that he had totally changed his attitude towards Chareidim after he appeared at the outdoor Amphi Shuni amphitheater, without a crowd, in a live broadcast, and dedicated a song, with love, to the residents of Bnei Brak who were receiving ugly attacks at the time since some of the city’s residents had violated lockdown measures.

“I leave the stage,” Aviv related, “and I see on my telephone, without exaggeration, 420 messages. I start opening them, scrolling, and learn that someone had given my number to all of Bnei Brak. And I cried. And I could not leave the empty amphitheater. I started to cry. The love, the division in the nation, suddenly everything came together. The love I received came from people I had denigrated since I was 19. People who now erupted with love and with tears. ‘Thank you so much Aviv for thinking of us,’ I read.”

“I was sitting on the stairs, the amphitheater was empty, and was I reading the messages and crying. At four in the morning, the theater staff got me up and told me: ‘Go home.'”

Geffen was invited to discuss his feelings with Rabbi Yitzchak Shapira of Bnei Brak and he declared that “In the near future I am going to devote all of my strength and my life so that the religious-Chareidi and secular communities will communicate with one another.” Geffen revealed that he had been motivated to work in this direction after a friend said that ‘the coronavirus is over and only the dosim (pejorative for religious people) are dying.’ which he felt to be “the worst nadir that we could have reached.” He also said that when his son would be Bar Mitzvah in July, he wanted him to have an Aliyah to the Torah despite the fact that he himself is an atheist, since “I need to feel connected.”